All The World's A Stage
by goddessofpainandagony
Summary: Team Avatar never stays long enough to see the disheartening, prophetic end to the play of the Ember Island Players. Because this play, this time, starts with something a whole lot more serious than tearbending and lame jokes. This play starts with the ultimate crowd pleaser - the banishment of a prince - turned - traitor.


**Title from Shakespeare. This an AU based off a throwaway line from another scar reveal story on another website, where an audience member wishes they had shown "the scar scene" in _The Ember Island Players. _This is that scar scene, as I imagine it, and how Zuko might react to it. Thank you for reading.**

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The play starts against a background of red, so bland and ubiquitous it could be any hall of any palace or house Zuko had lived in during his early childhood. The spotlight stays, illuminating the simply painted background with no actors forthcoming for several long seconds as the crowd slowly settles. The longer Zuko looks, the more a sickening sensation of _wrong _begins to creep, and maybe he's not the only one feeling it as Aang starts fidgeting to his left. Then it clicks.

The wall of red is meant to be a crowd of _people._ There are splashes of light paint everywhere, sometimes the outline of hair. The red isn't a tapestry but instead a series of long winter robes. It's a hastily made crowd that betrays a pinched budget for the production and neither bodes well for future effects or for Zuko's nerve. It barely resembles people at all, just close enough to be identified and just far enough to leave an unsettling feeling behind his eyes.

"Woah," Aang comments too loudly for the silence that has befallen the theater. "Creepy."

And then the play _begins._

Two actors walk out onto center stage, one dressed in a cheap imitation of the Fire Lord's opulent robes and the other more sensibly clothed in leggings and a tunic, both of deep red. The fake Fire Lord has his hair in a top knot gilded with the royal crown, and the other has no hair adornment at all.

"Son," the amateur Fire Lord shouts, and Zuko immediately straightens in his seat as he further examines this imitation _him._ After all, the Fire Lord has only one son – and this one has a twisted air about himself. This play certainly won't do any favors to the character of a banished, traitor prince. "What is the meaning of this? You dare approach me in this manner, as though I am not your father? Where is your _honor?"_

"My honor and loyalty no longer lie with you!" the other actor yells back, projecting his voice to every corner of the theater. "Or the Fire Nation! Long have I plotted for the throne, and now I will have it."

"Hold your tongue. You speak before the court!" The Fire Lord gestures first to the background, then to the audience – a gasp goes through the spectators, and Katara hums in confusion. _She doesn't get it._ Maybe none of them do. They didn't grow up in a warring nation, where to air family drama in public is seen as one of the deepest shames a child could commit.

"Let them hear! Let them hear what I say to you now: the Avatar lives, and I will capture him! He will be my tool, and with his power you will fall and the crown will be mine at long last! Your days are numbered, Ozai!" Another gasp sweeps the audience. Not only has the actor – Zuko committed the slight of addressing his father by name, but he has failed to address his _Fire Lord _with the due respect.

Onstage, the dishonorable prince punches forward and a thin, orange ribbon flies from his sleeve towards the Fire Lord, who in turn jumps back to avoid the assault. In the next moment his foot comes up and, without making contact, sends his pseudo – son to the ground. The actor pushes himself to his knees, making to rise too slowly, while the Fire Lord takes dramatically timed steps across the stage.

"Um, Zuko?" Aang hisses, and it isn't until then that Zuko realizes he's leaning forward with nails digging into the back of the seat in front of him.

And the next line they get disturbingly accurate, surprising Zuko after the disappointing opening minutes. He almost expected them create fiction of the whole thing. Unfortunately, it seems Ozai's words were to perfect for the playwright to knowingly alter. The Fire Lord steps up to his kneeling son, knots his fingers into the other actor's loose hair, and holds his other hand high. A thin, red spotlight pops up, coloring the hand a dark burgundy.

"You will learn respect, my son," the Fire Lord says, and this time instead of yelling the line his voice just seems to _carry _over the crowd. "And suffering will be your teacher."

It isn't the violent smack of the Fire Lord's hand falling to his son's face that sends Zuko out of his seat, though that shakes his core in a way he hadn't expected. It isn't the scream the actor – Zuko lets out, though that will certainly follow Zuko into his nightmares. What really does it is the way the audience _cheers, _whooping and clapping in obvious appreciation of the mutilation of their nightmare prince.

The curtain has barely started to lower on the first scene before Zuko is in the aisle, and the cheers haven't quieted any by the times he's out the doors into the cool night air. He doesn't stop walking until his toes are buried in chilly sand and his breathing isn't coming too hard, too fast, too _much._

"Zuko!" he hears from behind him, and he doesn't bother to turn to face them. He can still see that cheap background in front of him, can still hear those _awful things _his facsimile had said that Zuko would _never say to his father_

"It didn't happen like that!" he shouts, and flames jump out from his fingertips in short bursts. They lick out into the darkness before dissipating with no lingering heat.

"We get it, big guy," Sokka says, jogging out in front of Zuko and to his left. Suki is behind him, next to him, and Katara and Aang round his other side. And now, after everything that's happened, Zuko shouldn't feel like he's being cornered like an animal by a pack of hunters. But also, _now, _after that play, Zuko is almost surprised his first instinct isn't to lash out. "It's just some dumb Fire Nation propaganda flick. We should leave anyway – I'd hate to see what they do with _me."_

"It's cool, Sparky," Toph says as she approaches last, slow and completely at ease. Unshakeable as the earth she bends. "None of us went in there expecting realism."

"Yeah, totally! What kind of father would do something like that, right?" Aang adds entirely unhelpfully, and it must show on Zuko's face because in the next second the kid blanches and his eyes widen. "Right?" he adds, suddenly doubtful.

And, if nothing else, Zuko needs them to _understand._ He was never the son Ozai wanted, but he was never…_that _bad.

"_It didn't happen like that!_ I _never _said, I never – anything like that!"

"Zuko, calm down," Suki urges, shuffling forward. Sokka jerks her back just as Zuko throws a blast of fire at the sand. It goes behind him, away from them, but after their history he'll accept any precautions they want to take. He needs to get a cap on this turmoil anyway, his breathing is still running away from him and his fire is running with it. He knows this, he knows the basics; it all starts with control of his breath. "No one thinks you would say that."

"That's not what – how is _that _what this is about?" Katara demands, and her voice cuts through Zuko's robe and skin better than even the frost in the wind. "We just watched some sick reenactment of your father attacking you, and you're worried about what you _said?"_

"I didn't say it."

"We got that part! What about _what_ _he did?"_ When he doesn't answer, her hands knot into trembling fists. "So it's true? Your father actually did that to you?"

"What did you do?" Aang asks in wonder, like he doesn't really mean to speak out loud but the apparent shock of a father burning his son has temporarily disabled the Avatar's brain – to – mouth filter.

"I didn't-I," Zuko stutters, trying to come up with the right description. And when the words come to him it's with the force of a mongoose lizard and the fight for breathing is gone because so is his breath. He's never told this story, he realizes, not once. He's never needed to. "I disrespected him. In front of the court."

"That's it?" Aang says weakly.

"That's it," he confirms. "Not – not like that. I didn't threaten anyone, I just…I spoke out of turn, in front of some important people."

"That's _it?"_

"That…that's it."

A beat of silence.

"What an absolute…absolute _ash head!"_ Katara snaps, and Zuko is caught between offended at her choice of words and amusement that the level headed Katara has lowered herself to swearing.

"We'd exile someone for that," Sokka adds to his sister's colorful commentary. "For hurting their son like that. Or anyone. However old they were."

The question hangs, unspoken but demanding an answer. Zuko sighs out the number as he eases down to the sand, still warmed from his fire, and Katara gasps.

"We might kill him for that one," Sokka edits himself.

"You don't understand. It's different here. For me to disrespect my father – the Fire Lord – in front of his subordinates…it was a great embarrassment," Zuko says. "And when I was challenged to the Agni Kai…"

"The what – now?" Toph breaks in. Zuko is confused a moment, doesn't understand her own confusion. It hits him the moment Aang answers.

"A firebending duel. Usually to the death."

"Right. I keep forgetting you guys don't know…" He sighs, and watches all his handful of friends start to settle into the sand around him. Lowering themselves to his level in a way no one else ever has – not Azula, and certainly not Ozai. _No one but Iroh._ "He challenged me over the shame, and I had to choose between fighting my father or accepting my punishment. I couldn't do it…another weakness, in the Fire Nation, to not fight back."

"No offense," Sokka says with the air of a man full of offense, "but the Fire Nation is freaking crazy and evil to boot. None of what you've said adds up to permanently disfiguring a kid."

"Reminds me why we're here," Suki adds. She reaches out and rests her hand on Zuko's lightly. "For all the people who have been hurt by the corruption of the Fire Nation. Everyone your father mistreated."

"Yeah, we just weren't sure how high you ranked on that list until now!"

"Sokka!" Katara chides, followed by the splash of water falling down her brother's back and the unmanly shriek of said brother's protest.

"Besides," Toph says as Sokka continues spluttering in indignation, "I thought we were here to watch some dumb play."

"Talk about dumb!" Sokka agrees vehemently. "What was with those effects? We could make more accurate fire back home. Out of snow."

Zuko leans back and listen to his friends banter back and forth over the cooling sand, relaxing minutely when no backlash seems forthcoming. And, he supposes, for his first time telling the story, it certainly didn't go as poorly as it could have. Just imagine if Azula had been there to correct him.


End file.
